福柯《词与物》中的“中国百科全书”

"The Chinese Encyclopedia" in Foucault’s The Order of Things

福柯在《词与物》的前言中引述了博尔赫斯曾提到的"某种中国百科全书"中的动物分类,并由此开始了他全新的哲学思考。中国学者对此做了不少论述和阐释,但思考一般都是从中西差异的角度切入,对福柯持一种批评态度。比如认为福柯过分强调了中国文化的特殊性,强调了中西文化之间的差异性,忽略了文化的普遍性和可交流性,把中国视为与西方全然不同的他者,视为西方的对立物,这是一种猎奇,是一种西方式虚构,甚至是文化上的新殖民主义。本文就是对这些思考的再思考,通过对照博尔赫斯和福柯的著作中体现的思想,考察我们国内流行的观点是否合理有效。

In the preface of The Order of Things, Michel Foucault quotes and analyzes the classification of animals in a ＂certain Chinese encyclopedia＂ referred to by Borges, with which he initiates his brand new philosophical thinking. There are many discussions and interpretations by Chinese scholars on this part, but generally they understand Foucault from the perspective of the differences between China and the West, and they tend to blame him for these reasons. For example, they may think Foucault attached too much importance on the particularity of Chinese culture and the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, so he ignores the universality and communicability between cultures and regards China as an ＂other＂ different from the West, and even as the opposite of the West. For these scholars, Foucault tries to seek novelty, which is a kind of Western fiction and even cultural neo-colonialism. This article aims to rethink these thoughts and ideas. Through revisiting and re-reading the texts by Borges and Foucault, we will investigate whether these popular understandings in China are valid or reasonable.